The building belongs to the last stage of Spanish-Arabic art, when the seed of Mohammedan ideas and culture had long since taken root in the soil and produced a style purely local in many of its features. Some authorities trace the first principles of Arabic architecture back to the Copts; the Spaniards argue that their style is derived from Byzantine works they found before them in Andalusia. The germs of Arabic art are certainly not, if travellers' tales be true, to be found in Arabia. The Saracen conquerors were warriors, not artists, and their ideas of form and ornament were undoubtedly borrowed--like their vaunted culture--from the more civilized nations with which they came in contact. With Morocco just across the strait, it is not safe to claim too much of native genius and refinement for the Moor. Whatever may have been the primitive models of Andalusian architecture, as time went by it lost much of the dignity and simplicity of its earliest examples--such as the Giralda and the Mezquita. The Moors of Granada had wearied of the fanaticism and austerity of Islam. If not precisely decadent, they had lost the fire and enthusiasm of youth, and wanted to enjoy a comfortable old age. If the palace we are about to enter seems in parts more like the bower of an odalisque than the seat of royalty, we must remember that the sultans wanted to enjoy life here, and had no fancy for the stern, military-looking palaces of their Christian rivals. Your Oriental, like the cat, values luxury very highly, and yet, from our point of view, does not seem to secure it. A European would have found himself hopelessly uncomfortable at the court of Al Ahmar and Mohammed V. [Illustration: GRANADA--THE ALHAMBRA: TOWER OF COMARES]